SYDNEY: When he was just one year old, Tony`s young parents packed up their scant belongings and moved from Sydney`s world-famous beaches to build their own home on the city`s then-wild outskirts.
It was the 1980s and his teenage parents, fresh out of senior school and wildly in love, dreamed of a yard with trees to raise their young son.
They were both born and raised on Sydney`s laid-back northern beaches, but knew they could never afford a home of their own so close to the city.
Thirty years later, the web and graphic designer has two children, and a mortgage, of his own, and is among the one in 10 Australians who call Sydney`s sprawling western outskirts home.
"It would be nice to live down there near the beach and all that sort of stuff, and have that not just a holiday thing, but we just couldn`t afford to do that," Tony explains.
Both his parents and his wife`s family live within a short drive of their Winmalee home, in the Blue Mountains some 90 kilometres (56 miles) west of central Sydney, providing crucial savings on childcare expenses.
"Our budget pretty much just covers us for all of our outgoings," Tony, who asked that his family name not be used, told AFP.
"I don`t know if it keeps me awake at night, but it`s always in the back of my mind, when I`m driving to work (imagining) if I have an accident... If I got injured and was off work or something like that, yeah, we`d be stuffed."
Sydney was this year ranked the world`s 24th-most expensive city to live in by global human resources firm Mercer, behind Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong and Beijing, but ahead of Rome, New York, St Petersburg and Shanghai.
It is considered world-class in terms of quality of living, but more than one-fifth of Australians work more than 50 hours a week and 60 percent don`t take regular holidays, according to a recent 10,000-person study.
Western Sydney is one of the nation`s fastest-growing areas, and with a population of two million is home to just over one-in-10 Australians, as people leave the beaches and harbour for affordable housing, green spaces, and better quality of life.
It has emerged as a key battleground in this month`s elections, with both major parties desperate to curry favour with the region`s stressed, angry and volatile voters. Macquarie, Tony`s electorate, is among the nation`s most marginal seats.
"They moved there because of space and freedom and cheap housing," said demographer David Burchell, from the University of Western Sydney.
"(But) over the past 10 years it`s become much more densely populated, much more cosmopolitan, and they feel that the quality of life`s started to go backwards."
Infrastructure has struggled to keep up with the region`s population boom, with hospitals and transport chronically overburdened, and an influx of refugees from Sudan and Afghanistan has made boatpeople a hotly debated issue.
"Issues like the asylum-seeker one play out much more strongly in places like that than other parts of Sydney," Burchell said.
"To put it very crudely, it probably does nothing for property values. It`s an ugly thing to say but it is a brutal fact."
According to the 2006 census, western Sydney has the city`s highest rates of welfare dependence and unemployment, greatest number of single-parent families and its lowest education levels, with most relying on trade and service jobs.
Most Sydney households living on less than 500 dollars (447 US) a week were also found in the area, and Burchell said families on the city`s western fringe were typically living hand-to-mouth, with no buffer if things went south.
Many families were mortgaged to the hilt and saddled with high levels of loan and credit card debt. A March study of debt stress in the area found six of Australia`s ten worst defaulting areas were in western Sydney.
Some families were in such dire stress they could only afford to feed their children rice or semolina, the UWS study found, and Burchell said people lived in conditions of poverty that were unimaginable to most Australians.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has admitted rising fuel and grocery costs hit such areas hardest and has vowed to keep the economy stable to ease interest rate pressures and inflation, while pledging improvements to transport.
The area has been targeted by politicians in the lead-up to the polls but whatever the outcome of Saturday`s election, one thing is certain: people in Sydney`s west will keep on finding it tough.
"It`s a bit of a rollercoaster ride," says Tony, who spends five hours each day commuting to and from the city. "But you`ve just got to take the flow."
BDST: 0948 HRS, August 15, 2010
